Yossi popped the pill into his mouth, then swallowed it down with whatever horribly sweet alcoholic drink was in his cup. Taking Adira’s cup and adding it to his, he crumpled them and tucked them into his crossbody waist pack. These love-and-nature Nova events were probably the only mass parties where the sites looked better when everyone left than when they first arrived.
Several years back, Yossi and a group of his friends had gone backpacking in the Italian Alps without allowing their systems time to acclimate to the altitude. The weird, floaty euphoria he felt from that oxygen deprivation was like the wimpy little brother to the effect the Molly brought on him. He was laughing. He was dancing without any inhibitions. At some point, he met a guy from Morocco, but then the dude ran off. Then this girl came up and kissed him full on the lips before dancing to the next guy and kissing him. Later, he found himself very upset and scrambling around on his hands and knees, looking for the rubber band he’d lost while resetting his man bun. Hours later, when his head began clearing and the synapses in his brain started firing to the needs of his body rather than the beat of the bass, his first thought was Yeah, I’m never doing that again.
Sometime during the night, he had lost Adira. Their designated meetup for such an occasion was an artists’ tent where people were getting their nature on through paint. Pulling back the flap, he spotted her stretched out on a blanket next to some old guy’s easel. Yossi walked over.
“She yours?” the man asked without taking his eyes from his canvas.
“She is.” Yossi squatted down to brush her hair back from her face.
“When she came in, she wasn’t making too much sense. Said something about her boyfriend calling the Mossad to track her down. You the boyfriend?”
Yossi cringed when he heard “Mossad.” Being part of Israeli intelligence is like being part of Fight Club; the first rule of Mossad is that you don’t talk about Mossad.
“Yeah, and I’ve got Eli Cohen infiltrating the rave,” Yossi answered, saying the last part in a whisper. Every Israeli knew about Eli Cohen, who, in the early 1960s, penetrated the shell of the Syrian government and was later hanged for doing so.
The old man smiled at the reference, then nodded to Adira as he swirled his brush into a dollop of sea blue. “Keep her away from the pills. I know this is rookie night, but they aren’t doing her any favors.”
“Her and me both,” Yossi said, reaching up to fist-bump the man’s brush hand. He gently shook Adira’s shoulder until she opened her eyes. Her first words were, “Never again.”
He smiled as he helped her to her feet. The two of them were so much alike. She had to be the one for him. After Adira hugged the old artist, the two young lovers left the tent. Both were pretty much done with the party, but Yossi insisted they stay for sunrise. They could not make the long trip down to the Negev without watching the sun break the plane of the desert floor.
The next several hours passed slowly. They stayed for the most part on the edge of the action, although every now and then a groove would get them going and they’d step back onto the dance floor and into the fray. But mostly they sat on the ground, leaning against each other and talking about the future.
When it was time for the new day to begin, Yossi walked Adira to a place east of the grounds, where they could get an unobstructed view of the earth’s personal star making its grand entrance. It was perfect.
But then the idiot Gazans decided to fire off a barrage of rockets.
Seriously? What were they hoping to hit with their trash missiles? Most will probably land on their own homes.
Adira had done her mandatory military service in the north near Syria, so she was used to seeing these Katyushas. “That’s a pretty heavy salvo,” she said. “Not their usual five or ten.”
They watched as the bright lights arcing through the dawn sky went out abruptly one by one. Seconds later, boom, boom, boom echoed across the open land from the Iron Dome missiles intercepting their targets.
A voice called out over the sound system’s speakers. “Red alert! Red alert! Everyone down!”
Red alerts had become commonplace in Israel. Whenever one of Hamas’s or Hezbollah’s rockets actually made it across the border, a siren would sound in whatever city, town, or kibbutz might be in its way. That would be the signal for every Israeli to drop what they were doing and find the nearest bomb shelter. If you weren’t in a place that had bomb shelters—say, at a rave in the middle of the desert—you knew to drop to the ground and lie flat.
Yossi and Adira obediently lowered themselves to the dirt. But rather than going flat, Yossi laid on his side facing east. He pulled Adira close to him and they spooned there on the desert floor, watching what remained of the sunrise.
That’s when the guy next to him swore and pointed to the sky.